A light-emitting diode (referred to as “LED” in the following) is known as a light-emitting element including a semiconductor multilayer film. In particular, when a LED for emitting blue light such as a GaN LED is combined with a phosphor that emits yellow light or red light by excitation of the blue light, it can be applied to a light-emitting device for emitting white light (e.g., JP 2001-15817 A).
FIGS. 4A to 4D and 5A to 5C are cross-sectional views showing conventional manufacturing processes for the light-emitting device. As shown in FIG. 4A, a plurality of LED chips 102 are mounted on a substrate 101, and the top surfaces of the LED chips 102 are ground with a rotary grinder 103 to make the LED chips 102 even. Next, as shown in FIG. 4B, a paste containing a phosphor is applied to each of the LED chips 102, e.g., by screen printing, and phosphor layers 104 are formed. As shown in FIG. 4C, the top surfaces of the phosphor layers 104 are ground with the rotary grinder 103. Thus, as shown in FIG. 4D, the phosphor layers 104 are made even. Subsequently, the LED chips 102 covered with the phosphor layers 104 are separated from one another. Then, as shown in FIG. 5A, each LED chip 102 is mounted on a mounting board 106. As shown in FIG. 5B, the phosphor layer 104 is sealed with a sealing resin 107. Thereafter, as shown in FIG. 5C, a lens 108 is formed on the sealing resin 107, thereby providing a light-emitting device 100.
In the above manufacturing method, however, the grinding processes of FIGS. 4A and 4C take a long time, and thus it is difficult to reduce the manufacturing time For example, in the process of grinding the phosphor layers 104 in FIG. 4C, the height of each of the phosphor layers 104 should be controlled to the order of several μm to suppress variations in the chromaticity of light emitted from the light-emitting device 100 (see FIG. 5C). Therefore, the grinding process of FIG. 4C generally requires about an hour. This may result in lower productivity of the light-emitting device 100.